The Bad and the Beautiful (1952), Friday, March 3,
and
Two Weeks in Another Town (1962), Saturday, March 4, both directed by Vincente Minnelli, both streaming at home.

I like 1950s and 60s melodrama, the turgid emotions, the confidence meeting hysteria, the over-the-top acting and, in the case of Minnelli and Sirk, the brilliant camerawork that elevates all of this ridiculous storytelling to a fever pitch.

The Bad and the Beautiful is 2/3 of a great movie, about the rise and kind-of fall of movie producer Jonathan Shields (Kirk Douglas, perfect for the part). Three people–director Fred Amiel (Barry Sullivan), actress Georgia Lorrison (Lana Turner) and writer James Lee Bartlow (Dick Powell)–meet at another producer’s house to see if they would work with Jonathan Shields again. Shields is down-on-his-luck in Paris, no one will touch him. These three are at the pinnacle of their careers, Oscars in hand, box office for sure. In flashbacks, we see why they hate Shields.

OK, so the first two–Amiel and Lorrison–make sense. The opening of this movie is a doozy, a funeral of a once-great producer, Shields standing beside the grave as a man extols the deceased, Amiel mumbling complaints about the same. Later, we see Shields handing out $11 to every mourner, as no one would have shown up otherwise. But Amiel wasn’t in on this deal, he was genuinely there for the funeral, even if he was bad-mouthing the guy, who turns out to be Sheilds’ father. Amiel goes out to apologize, the two become fast friends, racing up the Hollywood ladder until Shields betrays him.

Lorrison is the daughter of a famous silent film star, a sort-of John Barrymore type, magnificent gestures and clipped consonants. She’s a drunk, but Shields admired her father, so he gets her sobered up, plays that he’s in love with her, dumps her when it’s time to move on. The cad!

Well, those are the first two stories, and man, they’re cool. Old Hollywood! The studio system! Shields is based a bit on David O. Selznick and Val Lewtwon, the latter the one who made the original Cat People so great by hiding the cat people instead of using the shitty cat-man costumes the studio provided. We get to see Ameil and Shields working to take this sow’s ear and spin it into silk, and they do. We get to see Lorrison fight and scrape and become a great actress. We get to see what shit you have to eat to make it in Hollywood.

The last act, though, whoosh. Dick Powell sucking on a pipe playing writer, freaking Gloria Grahame, one of the best character actors in Hollywood playing a Southern belle, and awfully. She won her one Oscar for the role, which is a crime. This part doesn’t work because she’s terrible, Powell is terrible, the backstabbing goes past acceptable (it involves the death of Grahame’s character) and, ultimately, no one ever cares about the writer. There is no way that Shields would give any shits about Powell’s important Southern writer, winner of a Pulitzer Prize. He just wouldn’t.

I’d watch this again, and will no doubt, for the first two acts. Hell, maybe I’ll just skip the last one.

Contrast this fast moving and thrilling look at the Golden Age of Hollywood with Two Weeks in Another Town, from a decade later, with the same star (Douglas), director, writer and producer. Bright Technicolor! The Italian Riviera! Good actors turned mediocre! Mental illness, sexy young ladies, George Hamilton proving once again that he’s just terrible!

Briefly: Jack Andrus (Douglas) is a washed up star who went CRAZY! It starts with him in an asylum, in fact. He’s called to Italy to work on a movie with Maurice Kruger (Edward G. Robinson). But Jack’s ex-wife, Carlotta, played by Cyd Charisse, is also in town with her millionaire husband. HER INFIDELITY DROVE JACK INSANE! Just so fucking stupid. The women in this film are either young Italian angels being drooled over by an older Kirk Douglas (though we’re supposed to cheer this pursuit) or they’re conniving harpies who devour men’s souls. Except that Carlotta’s infidelity is matched by Kruger’s, whose wife also seems to have lost her mind due to this but… well, the guys get to do that, right?

Also, it’s got that weird, post World War II, pre-1970s attitude of Italy not a place that people actually live but as an American tourist mecca where the locals kowtow to their every damn whim.

I’ve seen it, checked it off, won’t return.